Selections from “The Exegesis”

By Philip K. Dick

“The Ten Major Principles of the
Gnostic Revelation” (1978)

The
Gnostic Christians of the second century believed that only a special
revelation of knowledge rather than faith could save a person. The contents of
this revelation could not be received empirically or derived a priori. They
considered this special gnosis so valuable that it must be kept secret. Here
are the ten major principles of the gnostic revelation:

1. The creator of this world is demented.

2. The world is not as it appears, in order to hide
the evil in it, a delusive veil obscuring it and the deranged deity.

3. There is another, better realm of God, and all our
efforts are to be directed toward

a. returning there

b. bringing it here.

4. Our actual lives stretch
thousands of years back, and we can be made to remember our origin in the
stars.

5. Each of us has a divine counterpart unfallen who can
reach a hand down to us to awaken us. This other personality is the authentic
waking self, the one we have now is asleep and minor. We are in fact asleep,
and in the hands of a dangerous magician disguised as a good god, the deranged
creator deity. The bleakness, the evil and pain in this world, the fact that
it is a deterministic prison controlled by a demented creator causes us willingly
to split with the reality principle early in life, and so to speak willingly
fall asleep in delusion.

6. You can pass from the delusional prison world into
the Peaceful kingdom if the True Good God places you under His grace
and allows you to see reality through His eyes.

7. Christ gave, rather than received, revelation; he
taught his followers how to enter the kingdom while still alive,
where other mystery religions only bring about anamnesis: knowledge of it
as the "other time" in "the other realm," not here. He
causes it to come here, and is the living agency of the Sole Good God (i.e.
the Logos).

8. Probably the real, secret Christian church still exists,
long underground, with the living Corpus Christi as its head or ruler, the
members absorbed into it. Through participation in it they probably have vast,
seemingly magical powers.

9. The division into "two times" (good and
evil) and "two realms" (good and evil) will abruptly end with victory
for the good time here, as the presently invisible kingdom separates and
becomes visible. We cannot know the date.

10. During this time period we are on the sifting bridge
being judged according to which power we give allegiance to, the deranged
creator demiurge of this world or the One Good God and his kingdom, whom we
know through Christ.

To
know these ten principles of gnostic Christianity is to court disaster.

***************************

Introduction to
Selections from The Exegesis by L. Sutin

Part
Six, The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick, ed. L. Sutin

All of the selections are
published here for the first time. Two of these selections were given titles
by Dick ‑ a rarity in The Exegesis
as a whole.

"Outline in Abstract Form of a New Model of Reality
Updating Historic Models, in Particular Those of Gnosticism and
Christianity" (1977) is credited, by Dick, as being the joint work of
himself and his friend SF writer K. W. Jeter. Jeter recalls that while the ideas
emerged in the course of conversation between them, the writing is by Dick
alone.

The
final selection herein‑"The Ultra Hidden (Cryptic) Doctrine: The
Secret Meaning of the Great System of Theosophy of the World, Openly Revealed
for the First Time" ‑ is the longest Exegesis entry published to
date. It is atypical from most Exegesis entries in possessing an essaylike
structure and in having been typed out. Very likely it was intended as a summary
of findings, as was "Cosmogony and Cosmology" (1978), included in
a previous section. Was Dick serious about the title? In all probability,
yes. Was he also satirizing his very efforts at comprehending Truth? Almost
certainly.

The
Exegesis is a
free‑roaming affair‑as a nightly journal devoted to the expression
of one's inmost (and ever‑changing) thoughts on the largest and most
perplexing issues of life would naturally be. Careful selections serve it well,
for there is within it much repetition, much fretful worrying over past crisis
moments in his life, many futile stabs at insight, and occasional bouts of
pettiness and spleen. At its best, however, the flights of the Exegesis through
impossibly possible worlds are remarkable.